A Transdisciplinary Approach to International Teaching Assistants

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A Transdisciplinary Approach to International Teaching Assistants is written by Stephen Daniel Looney and published by Multilingual Matters. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1788925564 (ISBN 10) and 9781788925563 (ISBN 13).

North American universities depend on international teaching assistants (ITAs) as a substantial part of the teaching labor force, which has led to the idea of an ‘ITA problem’, a deficiency model which is framed as a divergence between ITAs’ linguistic competence and undergraduates’ and their parents’ expectations. This outdated positioning of ITAs as deficient diminishes the invaluable role they play within the academy. This book argues instead for an approach to ITA which recognizes them as multilingual, skilled, migrant professionals who participate in and are discursively constructed through various participant frameworks, modalities and activities. The chapters in this volume offer state-of-the-art research into ITA using a variety of methods and approaches, and as such constitute a transdisciplinary perspective which argues for the importance of dialogue between research and practice.